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Sunday, 29 November 2009

Today is the first Sunday in advent. In Sweden that usually means the start of glögg drinking (some know it as gluwhein and some as mulled wine).

Well, we made an early start by one day - always looking to integrate early and find the faults up-stream!

Traditional associated fayre with glögg are almonds and raisins - they're supposed to be in the persons cup and get infused with the drink. Well, we'd bought a ready-made assortment of blanched almonds and raisins.

Whilst warming the glögg I read the back of a packet:

Ingredienser: Kaliforniska russin 70%, mandel 30%.

Kan innehålla spår av nötter ocf torkade frukter.

Translation (emphasis mine):

Ingredients: Californian raisins 70%, almonds 30%.

May contain traces of nuts and dried fruit.

I don't think I have to comment on this (for fear of over-dosing in sarcasm and irony!) If someone had a peanut allergy would this information help them? Are the traces of nuts related to non-almond nuts? Who knows? Same question for the dried fruit...

Lesson
Just as testing requirements before implementation is important, it is equally important to test the customer documentation that goes with the product - even if it is just a fruit 'n' nut packet.

The "testing" or questioning of the customer documentation should try and establish if it is clear, unambiguous and ultimately useful.

Nuff said!

I'm going to inform the company involved and we'll see where it leads...

I'm sure there are hundreds more real-life examples out there with every-day product packaging and documentation. Or?

Matt Heusser opened the floodgates when asking testers to find grammatical errors in his chapter of Beautiful Testing, here. For the second fortnight in a row here announced a challenge winner, here. Matt also wrote a very interesting post on test training needs with a lot of interesting responses, here.

Michael Kelly, on Quick Testing Tips, made a post about templates for a testing session. Also on QTP Anne-Marie Charrett made some observations about learning and delegating, here.

For the fans of mnemonics Karin Johnson provided one for regression testing, here.

Pradeep Soundararajanposted some comments about Rahul Verma and fuzzing in software testing.

Ben Simo has been driving very fast recently or was there a problem with the GPS? He also gave food for thought about testing in a later post.

Yvette Francino looked at the matrix idea of rating priority and severity of bug fixes.

In this time of bacon fever and other pandemics Markus Gärtner had a look at some other things you can catch or be exposed to in the work environment, cultural infections.

Sunday, 15 November 2009

After reading a post on Matt Heusser's blog mentioning a discussion on "Zero Defect Software" I immediately started thinking of this as one of the "Holy Grails" of software development.

This was then a natural progression (for me) to then start thinking about the film "Monty Python and the Holy Grail", Holy hand-grenades to battle the things stopping us from reaching "ZDS", Monty Python in general and other silly analogies, etc, etc.

Yes, but don't expect them to not question what's put in front of them - as long as the questioning is about learning, understanding the different perspectives/applications and not just being critical for the sake of it!

So, monty python, ZDS and holy grails started me thinking about "testing myths" and how I might apply elements from their work to help achieve or dispell those myths.

It's seems unlikely to say that software testers can learn from Monty Python, but I think I'm seeing some parallels (it's not exactly proof by contradiction, more dis-proof by absurdity!)

MP: Maybe this is the Life of Brian syndrome - an innocent passer-by is mistaken for the messiah. Ignorance and misinformation play a part in incorrect conclusions.

It's possible to test everything

MP: Could be the same answer as for "testing is easy". As a different answer: This is the Mr Creosote approach to eating - he doesn't get full, eating and eating until he eventually explodes. (Yes, it's not possible to "test everything")

Testers are the Gatekeepers of Quality / Quality Police

MP: "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!" If you try and ship early we'll get out the comfy chairs!

(youtube search: monty python spanish inquisition)

And finally...

For all those unicorn questions Monty Python's The Life of Brian has a good answer for tolerance: "Blessed are the cheesemakers!"

Remember, the ideas are silly, but then so are the myths - what a perfect match!

Sunday, 8 November 2009

Over the last 2 weeks I've read and dipped into a lot of different testing blogs, and even left comments on a few. My google reader gets the updates on the blogs of 66 different testers (some are group blogs), various user and testing forums.

So, here are my highlights of some of those blogs (covering 25 Oct - 7 Nov). A whole range of topics have come up with quite a few references for Exploratory Testing, Agile, the STC magazine and the Testing.StackExchange site:-

Saturday, 7 November 2009

I got this idea from my company's internal blog site - where there's a weekly round-up of interesting internal posts. This is encouraged to be a rotating review - someone different does the round-up each week - a combination of a digest which is filtered by the reviewer's personal preferences...

I expect this to be nick'd - re-used & industrialized by some of the bigger testing forums soon :-)

This started out as a silly/playfull question but developed into a more serious and interesting topic considering how (and if) testers can be compared across the industry, how to do it and inherent problems in just comparing testers within one company.

The beginning of October saw the launch of the testing.stackexchange.com site for questions related to testing. I dip in there daily as the site is quite active and worth a look - whether you have a question or an opinion/answer.

Topics discussed this week have ranged from "ET dynamics", tester/dev ratios, cost of bug fixes, Agile/Agile-testers to good books for absolute beginners. Definitely worth a look.

Just over a week ago the STC announced the idea of an e-magazine, asking for contributions for article submission and help with the admin, here. They now have enough volunteers for the admin/help but submission of articles is still open - and it's open to everyone of whatever level of experience!